Tuesday, January 12, 2021

"Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trump’s failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol"

The story, below, is by Washington Post reporters Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey, and Philip Rucker.  It appeared on the newspaper's website Monday night.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html 

The report includes this:  

(A)s senators and House members trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday begged for immediate help during the siege, they struggled to get through to the president, who — safely ensconced in the West Wing — was too busy watching fiery TV images of the crisis unfolding around them to act or even bother to hear their pleas.

From the story:

“It took him awhile to appreciate the gravity of the situation,” [Senator Lindsey] Graham said in an interview. “The president saw these people as allies in his journey and sympathetic to the idea that the election was stolen.”

The reporters write:

The man who vowed to be a president of law and order failed to enforce the law or restore order. The man who has always seen himself as the protector of uniformed police sat idly by as Capitol Police officers were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, trampled on — and in one case, killed. And the man who had long craved the power of the presidency abdicated many of the responsibilities of the commander in chief, even having to be prodded into belatedly calling up reinforcements from the National Guard.

One of the writers of the story, Mr. Rucker, along with Post reporter Carol Leonnig, wrote the excellent book A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America (Penguin Press, January, 2020).

https://www.amazon.com/Very-Stable-Genius-Testing-America/dp/1984877496/